Tracking Current Federal Changes Affecting U.S. Education and Science
The arrival of Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. president brought with it a dramatic, chaotic and generally ideological assault on the status quo for American-based or -funded schools or researchers. This page, co-sponsored by Sage and the Consortium of Social Science Associations, aims to track actions – and reactions – to the flurry of activity in real time.
The Latest
- March 12: The U.S. Department of Education announces plans to slash nearly half of its workforce, from 4,133 to approximately 2,183 — affecting over 1,900 employees. Most education funding, however, comes from local sources. In terms of K-12 education, about 10 percent of funding for public education comes through the department, mostly directed toward low-income and disabled students (and note only the states control what is taught). For higher education, the department manages financial aid, such as Pell Grants, and student loans.
- March 11: Changes at funding agencies: NIH announced a plan to centralize peer review of applications for grants and contracts under its Center for Scientific Review with the goal of saving $65 million.
- March 11: The National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Undergraduates has canceled dozens of projects.
- March 11: The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business deleted “diversity and inclusion” from its 10 guiding accreditation principles, replacing the term with “community and connectedness” in a change it described as limiting risks at a time when diversity, equity, and inclusion terminology has become politicized. As statement argues its “goal [is] to proactively mitigate risks for our members;” some members respond with accusations of “sycophant obedience.”
- March 10: The U.S. Department of Education warns 60 colleges that it could take enforcement action against them if it determines they aren’t doing enough to protect Jewish students from discrimination or harassment. “The Department is deeply disappointed that Jewish students studying on elite U.S. campuses continue to fear for their safety amid the relentless antisemitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year,” a release quotes Secretary Linda McMahon. And after a tense White House exchange between Maine’s Democratic governor and the Trump, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it would temporarily halt spending on programs at the University of Maine.
- March 7: Federal agencies have canceled $400 million of grants and contracts to Columbia University (including $250 million from NIH) is response to “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” The move comes four days after a four days after the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, a new constituted group, announced it would conduct a probe into Columbia.
- March 6: Nature reports that National Institutes of Health staff have been told to find and possibly cancel grants for projects on transgender populations, gender identity, DEI in the scientific workforce, environmental justice, and any research that might seem discriminatory based on race or ethnicity, based on a 4-point scale from projects that solely support DEI-related activities to those that do not.. Grants for universities in China and climate change projects are also being reviewed. At least 16 termination letters have already been sent out.
- March 5: Having earlier temporarily blocked a 15 percent cap on the overhead costs in National Institutes of Health grants, District Judge Angel Kelley issues a nationwide preliminary injunction.
- March 4: From his Truth Social account, Trump says, ““All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
- March 3: On a 51-45 vote in the U.S. Senate, Linda McMahon is confirmed as U.S. Secretary of Education.
- March 2: Science reports the termination of many of the grants offered by the Department of Defense’s Minerva Research Initiative, while new applicants receive emails stating that DoD is “no longer offering the Minerva University Research Competition.” DoD had begun the Minerva in 2008 to “support social science research aimed at improving [the United States’] basic understanding of security, broadly defined.” Minerva had survived a scare in the last year of the first Trump term to axe the program. In its last funding round the program allocated $47 million in grants. “Jettisoning the entire … initiative, whose yearly cost is that of a single F-16, [would be] about the most cost-ineffective measure that DOD and the nation could implement,” the University of Michigan’s Scott Atran tells Science.
Index
Context
Unilateral actions from the U.S. president come in a variety of of forms with a corresponding variety of effects. Executive orders are generally the most powerful, since they have the force of law — “founded on the authority of the President derived from the Constitution or statute” — within Executive Branch agencies and for government officials. Orders remain in effect until canceled, sunsetted or reversed by the president.
Executive memoranda are similar to orders but do not need to be published in the Federal Register, cite their legal authority, and detail their budgetary impact. Proclamations do not have the force of law (unless Congress or the Constitution grant it) and generally deal with private individuals.
The Executive Branch consists of the president, his advisers and various departments and agencies. Those include the agencies responsible for the federal statistical system and for federally funded scientific research as well as areas where the federal government funds educational initiatives, which are otherwise a state or local responsibility. This branch is responsible for enforcing the laws of the land.
Chronological Listing of Events (newest on top)
February 27
Saying “the current threat is much graver than any time in U.S. history,” the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics asks its members to log both use cases for effective use of federal data and data driven evidence, and to log new issues with access, alterations, deletion, cancellation or removal of previously public data. “While we have gained some traction in Congress from the letter on protecting public data which COPAFS transmitted on February 11,” the umbrella group’s executive director Paul Schroeder writes, “we are adopting a multi-faceted approach to address the most egregious trouble spots and anticipate others before they can take hold.”
February 25
News reports note that former U.S. and defense officials sent a letter to Donald Trump, Trump, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson warning that China’s research capabilities were likely to outstrip that of the United States unless funding for science agencies is maintain. Reuters, having seen the letter, details that it calls for Congress to live up the $16 billion – at a minimum – authorized for the National Science Foundation in fiscal year 2025. This issue has long been championed by security officials in the U.S. government; signatory Chuck Hagel, a former Secretary of Defense, launched the Defense Innovative Initiative in 2014, for example.
The American Federation of Teachers, the American Sociological Association and the American Federation of Teachers-Maryland sue in U.S. District Court to declare the U.S. Department of Education’s Dear Colleague letter banning DEI efforts “unlawful and unconstitutional.”
February 24
Following a legal challenge from labor unions, U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman temporarily blocks the Department of Education and Office of Personnel Management from sharing sensitive information with the Department of Government Efficiency. “It may be that, with additional time,” the judge wrote, “the government can explain why granting such broad access to the plaintiffs’ personal information is necessary for DOGE affiliates at Education to do their jobs, but for now, the record before the Court indicates they do not have a need for these records in the performance of their duties.” Boardman did not a similar restraining order for the Department of the Treasury, noting that another judge has already sone so.
February 19
ALLEA, the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, issues a statement “expressing grave concern over recent developments in the U.S. affecting the autonomy of scientific research, including funding freezes and blatant censorship around language, research topics, and methodologies.” The umbrella group argues the U.S. actions not only harm the scientific and scholarly environment in the United States, “but also have far-reaching consequences for global research collaboration and scientific progress as a whole.”
February 18
The National Science Foundation fires 168 workers, or 11 percent of its full-time workforce in a Zoom call. Those let go included probationary employees with one year or less time at NSF an employees in their second year whose probationary period was now extended to two years. At-will employees, or those without contracts, were also fired. A February 20 article in Politico quotes Chief Management Officer Micah Cheatham as saying “This is the first of many forthcoming workforce reductions.”
February 17
U.S. District Court Judge Randolph Moss denies a petition from the University of California Student Association that asked for an emergency order temporarily restraining the Department of Education from sharing their members’ personal information with the Department of Government Efficiency.
February 14
Word is made public that the National Institutes for Health is firing 1,200 employees. Notices telling the workers that they were not “fit” to work for the agency because their “ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the agency’s needs” arrived over the Presidents’ Day weekend. All told, 5,200 employees are let go at the Department of Health and Human Services, which operates NIH.
February 13
A budget draft from the U.S. House of Representatives calls for, in the coming 10 years, cutting $330 billion in money that would otherwise go to higher ed. over the next 10 years to pay for President Trump’s desired spend on immigration and defense. This might look like a repeal of Biden’s student loan forgiveness and repayment plans, increasing the scope and rate of endowment taxes, and requiring colleges to help pay back student loans, based on previous House requests.
The Committee on Publication Ethics releases its position on terms banned in the reporting of work by academics and researchers. COPE says “editorial decisions must remain unaffected by the authors’ nationality, ethnicity, political beliefs, race, or religion. Publication choices should not be swayed by external governmental policies, unless compliance with applicable laws is at stake.” The statement retains the diversity, equity and inclusion priority that has been part of COPE’s strategic plan.
Linda McMahon, nominee to head the Department of Education, tells senators that the Trump Administration will not unilaterally shut down the department and will act within the law in “reorienting” it. This contrasts with earlier statements from Trump suggesting he could shutter the department without specific new legislation.
February 12
The American Educational Research Association and the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics issue a statement calling on the Trump Administration to reinstate the contracts issued by the National Center for Education Statistics.
February 11
Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, releases a database of 3,483 National Science Foundation grants awarded during the Joe Biden administration – 10 percent of the total – that were “diverted toward questionable projects that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.” Cruz, who chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, dubs the database, created by using a keyword search of the NSF grant database, “an investigation,” and calls for “significant scrutiny” of the projects. A release notes, “The database served as the backbone for Sen. Cruz’s October 2024 investigative report, which revealed how the Biden administration politicized scientific research. The report discovered multiple extreme research projects that were spearheaded by professors who were also promoting antisemitic protests on college campuses.”
February 10
The Department of Education terminates contracts issued for the Institute of Education Services, all but shuttering the division that includes the National Center for Education Statistics. NCES is the the second oldest and among the largest federal statistical agencies.
U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley delays implementation of the reduction of indirect costs, or overhead, imposed by the National Institutes of Health on its grants.
February 7
The National Institute of Health reduces the percentage of its grants that can go to indirect costs, of overhead, to 15 percent. In doing so, it cites the maximum overhead costs allowed by private foundations ibn making their grants. DOGE suggests the change could reduce government expenditures by up to $9 billion annually, while institutions receiving the money note that the system being struck down reflected a social compact in which the universities running NIH-funded projects factored the overhead into their research model and that private grants were essentially subsidized by the federal money.
February 5
Citing Title IX, landmark legislation outlawing sex-discrimination in education, the Trump Administration rescinds federal funding for any educational institution’s sports programs that allow trans athletes to participate in sports not in their birth gender. The order calls for the Department of Justice to investigate schools allowing trans athletes to compete and for the Department of State to push the International Olympic Committee to institute similar rules.
The U.S. House of Representatives’ Science, Space, and Technology Committee holds a hearing titled “The State of U.S. Science and Technology: Ensuring U.S. Global Leadership.” In his opening remarks, Chairman Brian Babin, R-Texas, focuses on competition with China and importance of the free market. In his testimony, Sudip Parikh, chief executive officer for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, argues that “the announcement [the previous week] of an abrupt spending freeze on science and technology funding broke trust and hurt the S&T enterprise. This is the kind of action that, even if brief, can have a lasting negative impact.”
February 4
An official at the National Science Foundation tells staffers in an NSF meeting that the agency, the largest funder of academic social and behavioral science in the United States, expects to lay off between 25 and 50 percent of its workforce. “A large-scale reduction, in response to the President’s workforce executive orders, is already happening,” a spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management later tells Politico in an email. Meanwhile, Scince
The U.S. Military Academy at West Point directs that all on-campus clubs with an ethnicity or gender in their names be immediately disbanded.
An executive order withdraws the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Council and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East and orders a review of US membership in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. According to the order, “The review will include an evaluation of how and if UNESCO supports United States interests. In particular, the review will include an analysis of any anti-Semitism or anti-Israel sentiment within the organization.”
The American Association of University Professors joins the lawsuit opposing anti-DEI diversity executive orders filed a day earlier on behalf of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, and the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore.
February 3
The National Science Foundation announces that has reopened its Award Cash Management Service website, which is used by researchers to receive their approved grant funding. Meanwhile, an article in Nature gives details on how the agency is “scouring” roughly 10,000 grant proposals, with two staff members in directorates outside the one which make the grant reviewing proposals by looking for suspects terms in the body of the proposal.
The group Democracy Forward files a lawsuit in filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland on behalf on the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education challenging executive orders attacking diversity, equity and inclusion.
February 1
The Centers for Disease Control orders researchers to retract papers submitted to all journals. The goal is to ensure papers containing banned terms are scrubbed from CDC-authored manuscripts.
January 31
The Trump Administration re-charters the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, reducing its membership from 26 to 24 and ordering that an Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and a Special Advisor for AI & Crypto be both members and co-chairs of the council. The rechartering contrasts with Trump’s first term in office, in which the action occurred a record 33 months into his tenure.
January 30
Census Bureau Director Robert Santos resigns three years into his five-year term. In his resignation letter, he wrote, ““Building generational trust across communities and tribal nations is foundational to ensuring our methods, data, and products are timely, of high quality, and relevant. I’ve seen firsthand how we can provide relevant data to communities to address their needs as defined by their life experiences and perspectives.”
January 29
The Office of Management and Budget rescinds its order to freeze grant funding. The White House claims this is not the end of the freeze, but merely a rescinding of the order.
Trump issues an executive order directing federal agencies to curb antisemitism at colleges and universities within 60 days. A fact sheet accompanying the executive order pledges to revoke student visas and deport noncitizen students who are “Hamas sympathizers.” This executive order partially frames the measure as a sop to public safety. Free speech scholars will argue that the order, which uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition as the basis for its definition of antisemitism, conflates criticism against Israel with antisemitism. The order itself conflates the two, citing political actions such as moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem as of a piece with combating antisemitism.
The Trump administration announces it will withhold federal funding for “illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools,” including based on gender ideology and “discriminatory equity ideology.“ These ideologies include “White Privilege” or “unconscious bias, “steering students toward surgical and chemical mutilation,” and compelling children to “adopt identities as either victims or oppressors solely based on their skin color and other immutable characteristics.“ It calls for schools to provide students with an education that instills “a patriotic admiration,” while claiming the education system currently indoctrinates them in “radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight.” The order also re-establishes the 1776 Commission, cancelled by the Biden Administration, to promote patriotic education.
Citing “educational choice” and perceived failings in public education, an executive order gives the Department of Education 60 days to determine how it can use federal funds for faith-based and charter schools. Beyond the DOE, the order affects child-based block grants from the Department of Health and Human Services, schoolchildren of military parents, and students attending Bureau of Indian Education schools.
January 28
Following immediate legal action, Loren L. AliKhan, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, stays the Office of Management and Budget pause of grant spending while she considers arguments around the the action.
January 27
The Office of Management and Budget tells Executive Branch agencies to “pause” grant, loan and other financial assistance programs (PDF). This resonates strongly at science agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, whose reason for being is to make grants
January 21
Trump issues an executive order to end DEI initiatives for organizations receiving federal funding, framing the order as a bid to restore national unity and as a safety matter, citing “the disastrous consequences of illegal, pernicious discrimination that has prioritized how people were born instead of what they were capable of doing.” The order immediately causes concern among HE institutions. The administration can’t control how most universities fund their programs, but they can revoke funding for universities that do. New investigations will include “institutions of higher education with endowments over 1 billion dollars” (note: they are currently in talks to raise taxes on investments from university endowments to as high as 21 percent). This has led to the removal of DEI webpages, canceled meetings, and faculty being asked to remove DEI efforts from their profiles. Rutgers University, for example, announced that it would cancel a conference on DEI.
The National Institute of Health issues an immediate pause on issuing documents and public communication.
January 20
A new executive order from Trump rescinds 78 Biden-era executive orders are rescinded , including those that provided targeted support for Hispanic-serving institutions and tribal colleges and universities. At the time of the order, more than 800 colleges are eligible for $1 billion in annual federal funding based on their student body’s racial composition. Another rescission rolls back the Census Bureau decision to expanded tabulation of a state’s total population to include all individuals whose usual residence was in that state, regardless of their immigration status.
Claiming the the Biden Administration had “trampled free speech rights … under the guise of combatting ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation'” online, a Trump executive order mandates that “no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen” and that no federal resources be used to censor free speech.
The Trump Administration through an executive order orders the establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency. The agency known as DOGE, which is not a part of the Cabinet, is formed from the renamed United States Digital Service. The order requires each federal agency to establish a DOGE team of at least four employees. In addition, agency heads will be tasked with “promot[ing] inter-operability between agency networks and systems, ensur[ing] data integrity, and facilitat[ing] responsible data collection and synchronization.”
Resources
Chronicle of Higher Education Tracker of DEI Dismantling – This tracker’s roots predate the arrival of the Trump Administration and reflect long-standing coverage by the Chronicle on the retrenchment of DEI initiatives.
Project 2025 Tracker – This tracker, sponsored by Rustic Gorilla Press, follows the implementation of the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project, known as Project 2025
Executive Orders: A Beginners Guide – A handy backgrounder on the taxonomy of presidential actions from the Library of Congress
Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions – This tracker, sponsored by JustSecurity.org, an online forum established in 2013 and based at New York University’s Reiss Center on Law and Security.
2025 Donald J. Trump Executive Orders – A downloadable page from the Library of Congress page containing documents that have been published in the Federal Register. Because the White House cannot deliver a document to the Office of the Federal Register until after the president signs it, there is always a delay (of at least one day, typically of several days) between when the president signs a document and when it is published.
A “Dear Colleague” letter from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights detailing the department’s “existing interpretation” of federal law banning diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. The letter does not have the force of law, but does promise legal action for entities hat do not comply with its interpretations.
Suspect Keywords: A program officer at the National Science Foundation on February 3 anonymously releases a list of keywords they say are the ones used by the Trump administration to filter funding decisions. (The keywords ban echoes an effort during the first Trump administration flagging seven words or phrases to be expunged from the 2019 budget of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)
Opportunities to Respond
Downloadable letter from the United Science Alliance (coordinated by the American Psychological Association) on the importance of scientific research
A statement from political scientists “express[ing] our urgent concern about threats to the basic
design of American government and democracy.” The statement had 901 signatories as of midnight on February 18.
A Google Doc from the the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics asking its members and other users of public and taxpayer-funded federal data to log use cases for effective use of federal data and data driven evidence, and to log any new issues concerning access, alterations, deletion, cancellation or removal of previously public U.S. government data.
Commentary
“What Would Be the Point of Abolishing the US Education Department? An Anthropologist Explains” – Social Science Space – Alex Hinton, distinguished professor of anthropology at Rutgers University Newark, offers four reasons that likely underlie calls to dis-establish the U.S. Department of Education
“Counterpoint: Government funding must support research that represents all Canadians” | National Post, January 28, 2025 – While not ever mentioning the example of the United States, Ted Hewitt, president of Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, argues, “However much we may disagree with the need for research, its objectives, its findings, or public and institutional policies concerning equity, it is essential that as a society we continue to support the widest possible array of investigation, its presentation and, perhaps most importantly, the critique and debate this engenders — all with the context of scholarly academic freedom and expert review.”
“As Trump Targets Universities, Schools Plan a Counteroffensive” | New York Times, January 29, 2025 – Reporters Stephanie Saul and Alan Blinder discuss how U.S. universities are turning to lobbyists and tweaks to their messaging to blunt or reverse actions from the Trump Administration.
“‘Despair is not an option’ — how scientists can help protect federal research” | Nature, February 4, 2025 – Gretchen T. Golden argues that existing policies within federal agencies mean that ” federal scientists now have more rights and protection from political interference than ever.”
“As Trump Targets Research, Scientists Share Grief and Resolve to Fight” | New Yok Times, February 16, 2025 – Reporter Raymond Zhong takes the temperatures of attendees at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
“After Sweeping Anti-DEI Guidance, What Should Colleges Do?” | Inside Higher Ed, February 18, 2025 – Reporter Liam Knox details responses from several education law specialists, such as Art Coleman at EdCounsel LLC, who said, “A Dear Colleague letter—even one written in very technical, well-settled legal parlance—cannot change the law, cannot alter constitutional standards, cannot change the contours of what federal courts have said. The practical reality on the ground right now is, institutions around the country are looking at a body of law that has not changed … What has changed is the threat of overreach and aggressive enforcement grounded in policy preferences, not legal standards.”
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“America can’t be great without great science. That is where the Academies can help” | The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, March 10, 2025 – Molly Galvin interviews National Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt on how the private, nonprofit institution — albeit one incorporated by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 — is “navigating the turbulence.”
